


Tumble Dry, Low Heat

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: MST3K Alternate Universes [16]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: 4 a.m. on a Monday is a great time to be alone in a laundromat, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Friendships, Insomnia, Kinga is running a very very poorly conceived experiment on herself, Laundry, M/M, Max and Jonah are nerds, hey guess what kids it's yet another mundane AU, just a little bit of flirting, poor Jonah is never going to get any work done, until you're not alone in the laundromat, whatever you do don't touch Kinga's lacy underthings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 09:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13499194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Jonah's circadian rhythm isn't in sync with the rest of the world, and that's by design. He does his best work in the middle of the night. The gentle white noise of a laundromat is the perfect place to get into the flow zone for him. This only works when he's the only one there. Usually, he is the only one there. Until he's not any more.





	Tumble Dry, Low Heat

**Author's Note:**

> ...look, I don't even have an excuse any more. I'm a weirdo with a hell brain that won't stop giving me totally mundane and everyday AU situations and like... I could stop? I should stop. I should be focusing on other things. But when something is easy to write and done in an afternoon, I'm not going to just pretend I didn't write it.
> 
> I need an intervention.

Jonah... wasn't the most observant person. He could admit that. A lot of things slid past his radar, especially when he was preoccupied, and he was always preoccupied at the laundromat because for some reason 4 a.m. on a Monday surrounded by the hum of spinning laundry was the most productive he ever got outside of a lab setting. He was usually alone... and when he realized he wasn't alone, he wasn't sure how long the other person had been there, but now there was someone sitting up on one of the folding tables right under the "do not sit" sign, knitting. The click of the metal needles was what had gotten Jonah's attention, a steady but out of place sound. He unfolded from his habitual slouch and gave the person a once-over.

Chubby guy, greying hair, pretty short with how far his feet were from the floor. Whatever he was knitting was an obnoxious shade of green. He looked harmless. He didn't look up from his knitting, and Jonah went back to his notebook, highly aware of the sound of the needles clicking but not bothered by it. His dryer beeped some amount of time later, and he wheeled his clothes over to the other folding table, right next to where the guy was sitting.

"What are you making?" he asked, picking up a t-shirt to fold.

"It's a hat," the man said. "Or it will be in a couple of hours." He nodded at the shirt in Jonah's hands. "Did you pick that up at a concert?"

"Yeah," Jonah said, brightening a little. "Arcade Fire's great. Are you a fan?"

"We were probably at the same show, if you saw them near here." He put down the knitting and held out a hand. "I'm Max."

"Hi Max. I'm Jonah."

"Hi Jonah." Max smiled when Jonah picked up another shirt. "You can tell a lot about a person by their t-shirts, you know."

"Oh really?"

"You work at Gizmonics." Jonah looked down at the shirt, then up with suspicion.

"It doesn't say that anywhere."

"They gave out that shirt at the campus 5K. I helped hand them out."

"Oh. Okay." Jonah shrugged and folded it-- that was weird but not unaccountably weird-- then picked up a nice safe pair of jeans with no obvious clues about them that he could see. Max picked his knitting back up, still faintly smiling, and minded his own business until Jonah found another t-shirt to fold.

"Whose side were you on in Civil War?" Jonah snorted, folding his Marvel shirt and tossing it in the basket.

"Cap, one hundred percent, Tony was just flat out wrong."

"I'm beginning to think you have good taste," Max said, and he put down the knitting and hopped off the table when his washing machine stopped whirring. Gosh, he was even shorter than Jonah had guessed. Jonah glanced over his shoulder, then blinked and turned around fully. 

"What are you doing?" Max finished hand-wringing a sweater above the washer and held it up critically.

"I'm felting this," he said. "But it's going to need the dryer, it's not done enough. This bit is tricky." Jonah watched him pull a fabric tape measure from his pocket and check the width of the sweater. 

"Aren't you not supposed to dry sweaters like that?"

"I know what I'm doing," Max said, "but thanks for your concern." He didn't sound sarcastic. Jonah just shrugged and went back to his folding. He did his laundry every week, so there was never too much of it, and he was done in a few minutes.

"Good luck with your sweater," Jonah said as he turned to leave the laundromat.

"Thanks. I need it."

Most people, when they meet someone at 4 a.m. on a Monday, don't expect to see that person again. But a week later, Jonah was there, always punctual for his standing appointment with the flow state of mind, and the laundromat wasn't empty when he came in. 

"It's you again," Max said, sounding surprised. "Hi."

"Hi. What are you doing here?" Max arched a brow, and Jonah clarified, "More knitting stuff?"

"Oh! No, just regular laundry." 

"Don't you sleep?"

"You obviously don't," Max said, on the verge of laughter. "I'm kind of an insomniac. And the laundromat is usually dead at this time of night and it's nice not to be bothered."

"I can leave you alone--"

"You're not a bother." Max's response was a little too quick and a little too loud, and he immediately looked down at his knitting. "Why are you up this late?"

"I did a study on my own productivity," Jonah said. "Turns out I do my best thinking between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. So I shifted my sleep cycle. I sleep from 5 to midnight, do my own stuff while it's dark, and I work 7 to 3 most days."

"Weird," Max said. "If I didn't already know you were a Gizmocrat that would have sealed it for me. I've never met people with weirder data sets."

"You think that's weird, I heard about a girl who built a fitness tracker that monitors the level of cortisol in her own blood at all times," Jonah said, starting to stuff laundry into a washer. "Now that's a hardcore data set." Max didn't say anything, and after a moment Jonah glanced at him to find a weird expression on his face.

"I've met her," he said, and it didn't take more than three words and that tone of voice to make Jonah desperately curious about that story, but Max didn't elaborate. He nodded toward the wall of dryers where two of them were spinning. "That stuff's not yours, then?" Jonah shook his head, and Max's lips twitched. "This place is getting awfully busy for this time of night." Jonah finished loading his washer, tossed in a pod, and came over to lean against the folding table Max wasn't sitting on.

"What are you making now?" The yarn Max was working this time was a very cheerful canary yellow. Jonah liked it a lot.

"It'll be a scarf when it's done," Max said. "But I've only just begun it. It'll be yellow and black stripes."

"You look like a Hufflepuff," Jonah said, and Max laughed.

"Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Some people you can just tell." He eyed Jonah and smiled. "Your hands say Gryffindor but your eyes say Ravenclaw."

"My hands?" Jonah looked down at them, puzzled. "How do you figure?" 

"Was I right?"

"Too easy, most Gizmocrats are Ravenclaws."

"Yeah, that's true. Except for all the Slytherins--" Max looked past Jonah and his eyes widened. "Shit, you invoked her."

"What are _you_ doing here?" The woman who walked into the laundromat looked like she was on her third five-hour energy of the day, hair falling out of a messy bun and deep shadows under her eyes. "Are you stalking me?"

"Why would I make myself miserable like that?" Max asked. She sneered at him, barely spared a glance for Jonah, and stalked over to the spinning dryers, glancing down at her-- fitness tracker, for lack of a better word-- and tapping her foot twice before both dryers spun to a stop. She piled her laundry into a cart and pushed it in the direction of the folding tables, then paused, lip curling.

"Move." Jonah glanced at Max, who shook his head wordlessly and went back to his knitting. "Hello? It says "do not sit" right behind your head. Get off the table."

"You don't get to boss me around when I'm off the clock," Max said. "If you're capable of being polite, though..."

"You. Move." She pointed at Jonah and jerked her thumb away. Jonah shrugged and shifted over to lean against the table Max was sitting on, and she rolled her eyes at them and dragged her cart over, proceeding to ignore them both while she folded her clothes.

"You dropped something," Jonah said, and she didn't turn around, just held out a hand, then snapped her fingers when nothing happened.

"Well? Give it to me."

"Uh, I don't know if you want me to--" She let out an exasperated hiss and Jonah shrugged and stooped down to pick up the lacy little scrap of fabric, pinching it between finger and thumb and dropping it into her outstretched palm. She froze when she saw what it was, then snatched it away and shot a poisonous glare at them both. "You told me to give it to you," Jonah said defensively.

"That's literally what she said," Max said, doing a very poor job of restraining a snicker. 

" _Ugh_." She turned slightly so her back was to them, and ignored them for a solid three minutes, until she pulled a sheet out of the basket and swore under her breath. "Help me with this," she demanded, looking at Max.

"Why are you asking me? He's got the wingspan of a condor and you're asking me?" She turned a little more and eyed Jonah as if this was the first time she saw him.

"Help me," she said, holding up the sheet.

"Who _are_ you?" He'd never seen such an impetuous attitude in such a small and clearly sleep-deprived body. Her fitness tracker beeped twice, and her lip curled as she hit the button on it without looking at it.

"I'm Kinga Forrester. Are you going to help or what?" Jonah took the sheet from her and started folding it. A queen sized sheet was a trial for someone her height and a breeze for someone his; he might as well be helpful. Max shook his head.

"Don't do her any favors. It's a slippery slope."

"A slippery slope to what?"

"You don't do me favors," she said in a bored tone. "You do your fucking job. And you're mediocre at it."

"You have some nerve calling me mediocre when I'm the only person you haven't terrorized out of the position."

"You're too dumb to be properly fearful."

"Hey, that's uncalled for," Jonah said, and he handed the folded sheet back to her. "You're kind of a bitch, huh?"

"She's not kind of a bitch," Max said, at the same time Kinga said, "I'm not kind of a bitch." She glared at him and then added, "I'm the queen bitch."

"You're the cortisol tracker lady," Jonah said, and she rolled her eyes.

"Yeah? And?"

"That was some really ambitious technology, that's all. How does it work?" She finished folding the towel in her hands, put it in her laundry bag, and turned to look up at him with one brow raised.

"It's very technical, you probably wouldn't get it."

"I'm working on transdermal blood glucose monitoring, it's kind of similar," he said, and her expression smoothed out. 

"Oh. You're one of Drake's. Okay." She smirked and folded her arms. "Drake can figure it out for himself. He's eight months behind me and that's where he can stay."

"Science should be collaborative," Jonah said, and she barked a laugh.

"Yeah, it's collaborative right until some nosy asshole patents your invention out from underneath you. Fuck that. Once was enough."

"Don't bother," Max said. "She calls me stupid but she won't work with anyone who's conversant enough with the nanotech to replicate it. Because she's paranoid."

"I'm not paranoid," she spat. "It's not paranoia when they're actually out to get you."

"Nobody's out to get you," Max said. "You're just a crazy person."

"You think so, huh?" She threw the rest of her unfolded clothes into her basket and picked it up. "We'll see how crazy you think I am at nine in the morning. See you in the lab, _Max_."

"What just happened?" Jonah asked when the door closed behind her. Max shook his head and sighed.

"She's stalking me. She accuses me of doing it to her, but I swear she's tracking my phone or something."

"Why?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. She's either secretly in love with me or she's planning my murder. Or both. Probably one, maybe both."

"And you work with her?" Max nodded, and Jonah shook his head. "That's rough."

"Tell me about it." 

"What's her deal?"

"You know how she's monitoring her cortisol levels?" Jonah nodded. "She wants to see how high she can get them."

"...why would anyone _want_ to do that?"

"Mad science eats its own alive," Max said philosophically. "Like some kind of freaky genetically enhanced ouroboros."

"And what about you?"

"She tried to put one of those things on me. I wouldn't have it. Because as soon as she got it on me she'd be trying to stress me out and use me as her guinea pig instead of herself. And I have enough issues without that whole disaster in the making." Max put down his knitting and got off the table to go switch his laundry over. Jonah sat on the table he'd vacated and leaned back on his hands. "I'm... glad you were here. Because she can get... uh, intense... when there's no one else around."

"That wasn't intense?" Jonah arched both brows. "Why do you put up with it? Just get transferred to a different lab. Let her find someone else to terrorize."

"It's not that simple."

"Sure it is. Hey, you could transfer into my lab. If you're already working on transdermal tech, you wouldn't even be wasting any skills in the changeover."

"It's not that simple," Max said again, "but I wish it was."

"What's not simple about it?"

"I'm sorry, can we talk about something else? Because this conversation is just going to depress me."

"Uh... yeah, sure. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make things worse."

"You're trying to help," Max said. "It's been a while since anyone actually tried to help me. I do appreciate it. But this is my lot in life."

"So you have to be at the lab at nine?"

"Don't rub it in."

"Wanna grab breakfast after my laundry's done?"

"...why?" Max asked, eyes narrowing. "So you can try to poach me?"

"I don't want to _poach_ you," Jonah said, and he didn't think he was being that obvious with his tone of voice but Max went slightly pink anyways. "I have to be at the lab by seven, I'm hitting a diner when I leave here one way or another. You don't have to come with me, I was just offering."

"No, that.... that sounds nice. Sorry, I'm getting as paranoid as she is."

"Not every Gizmocrat is a mad scientist."

"That's a lie. Every Gizmocrat is a mad scientist. But only some of them are evil."

"...that's fair," Jonah conceded. Max hopped back up on the folding table and picked up his knitting again, and Jonah pulled out his notebook. Max didn't point out that Jonah wasn't writing anything, and Jonah didn't point out that Max kept messing up and unraveling his stitches. After Jonah moved his clothes to a dryer, he sat down a little closer to Max, and after a moment and a furtive sideways glance, Max tucked one foot under his other leg, his knee nudging Jonah's leg just a little bit. They both smiled to themselves and kept pretending that they were getting anything at all accomplished. When Max's dryer buzzed, he didn't move to get it, but he put down the knitting he was making no actual progress on and cracked his knuckles, and a second after he set his hands on the surface of the folding table, Jonah dropped his pen and covered Max's hand with his own.

"Subtle," Max said playfully, and Jonah cracked a smile.

"I'm sorry, I'm the literal worst at flirting, I just trip over my words when I try to be cute. ...you don't mind, do you?" he added hopefully.

"Depends on the answer to this question," Max said, and Jonah bit his lip expectantly. "Pancakes or waffles?"

"Pancakes are just waffles that suck at holding syrup," Jonah said, and Max grinned and turned his hand under Jonah's to thread their fingers together.

"You don't have to be cute to charm me. Just be honest. That's working pretty well so far."

"I can do that," Jonah said. His dryer buzzed a minute later. Neither of them bothered to fold their clothes before they took off for the diner. It had been a long time since anyone bothered to wake up early enough to get breakfast with Jonah. Maybe, he thought, maybe if this went well... maybe they could make a thing out of it. That'd be nice. He'd sacrifice productivity for companionship, absolutely.


End file.
